Figgy Pudding | A Victorian Christmas Tradition
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Subtitles: Jose Mendoza
DISH NAME
ORIGINAL 1845 RECIPE (From Modern Cookery for Private Families)
The Author’s Christmas Pudding.
To three ounces of flour, and the same weight of fine, lightly-grated bread-crumbs, add six of beef kidney-suet, chopped small, six of raisins weighed after they are stoned, six of well-cleaned currants, four ounces of minced apples, five of sugar, two of candied orange-rind, half a teaspoonful of nutmeg mixed with pounded mace, a very little salt, a small glass of brandy, and three whole eggs. Mix and beat these ingredients well together, tie them tightly in a thickly floured cloth, and boil them for three hours and a half. We can recommend this as a remarkably light small rich pudding: it may be served with German, wine, or punch sauce.
MODERN RECIPE
INGREDIENTS
- 3 oz (85g) Flour
- 3 oz (85g) Bread Crumbs
- 6 oz (170g) Beef Suet (Lard or Crisco will work as well)
- 6 oz (170g) stoned Raisins
- 6 oz (170g) Currants
- 4 oz (113g) Minced Apples
- 5 oz (142g) Brown Sugar
- 2 oz (57g) Candied Peel
- ½ teaspoon Nutmeg and mace
- A few grains of Salt
- 3 oz (88ml) Brandy
- 3 Eggs
METHOD
1. Boil the pudding cloth for 20 minutes. Then carefully remove it from the pot and lay it out flat. Spread suet, lard or butter across it and rub in a liberal amount of flour.
2. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix. Then form into a ball and place in the middle of the pudding cloth. Gathering the cloth tightly around it, twist the cloth at the 'neck' then wrap it with a string several times and tie tightly around it.
3. Boil a large pot of water with an upside down plate on the bottom of the pot. Set the pudding in the boiling water and let boil for 3 1/2 hours. Check often and add more boiling water when necessary.
4. Remove pudding from the water and allow to dry before unwrapping. This can be served right away or aged for several weeks/months.
Punch sauce for Sweet Puddings
This may be served with custard, plain bread, and plum-puddings. With two ounces of sugar and a quarter of a pint of water, boil very gently the rind of half a small lemon, and somewhat less of orange-peel, from fifteen to twenty minutes; strain out the rinds, thicken the sauce with an ounce and a half of butter and nearly a teaspoonful of flour, add a half-glass of brandy, the same of white wine, two thirds of a glass of rum, with the juice of half an orange, and rather less of lemon-juice: serve the sauce very hot, but do not allow it to boil after the spirit is stirred in.
- 2oz Sugar
- ¼ pint Water
- Lemon & Orange Rind
- 1 ½ oz Butter
- 1 Teaspoon Flour
- ½ Wineglassful Brandy
- ½ Wineglassful White Wine
- ⅔ Wineglassful Rum
- Orange & Lemon Juice
MUSIC CREDITS
We Wish You a Merry Christmas by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Artist: www.twinmusicom.org/
Angels We Have Heard - Christmas by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Source: incompetech.com/music/royalty-...
Artist: incompetech.com/
Rondo for harp - Mike Harper
#tastinghistory #christmaspudding #figgypudding
What's everyone's favorite part of Christmas? Mine is definitely the music, which is probably why this is my favorite episode yet!
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Yes, I do that too (smell books old and new), I have a large collection of them. Great smell.
You should look into what evil baker came up with fruit cake!!Or at least mixed it in with Christmas.Also love your videos I share them with my mom in hopes she'll make some for me.
I must admit I also love Christmas music DESPITE having worked in retail for a while. I blame it on the fact that I'm also a music major, ha
@@stevenrose9818 Good fruit cake is actually wonderful. Sadly, most of them are not good.
@@FelixWheatfield Me too! When I worked at The Sharper Image, we had 1 CD that played on repeat.
Strong suspicion that Christmas is so associated with warmth because everyone was absolutely hammered
Oh... Santa's rosy cheeks aren't from the cold after all.
At least parts of my family keep this tradition alive. :-D And how merry they are.
@@DragonTigerBoss neither was rudolph's red nose lol. a bunch of drunk drivers, they were!
And that’s okay 🤣
Was? My Christmas cake full of brandy and all the other alcohol I'll be drinking this Christmas would like to contend most of us still are hammered on Christmas. At least in Britain we are.
The stomach of an animal...
IT'S A CHRISTMAS HAGGIS!!!
Basically!
Any haggis can be a Christmas haggis if you're brave enough! Wonder if you could make it as a stuffing...
I'm all for a Christmas haggis.:-)
Not without sheep lung!
@@jmcdhome it's not hard to get sheep lung. All you have to do is butcher your own sheep, then you can keep any bits you like. I like the heart personally, and my husband leans twords the liver.😉
I have actually eaten a 46 year old christmas pudding once. A family found it in their granny's house (it was apparently dated 1969) and brought it to the University where I worked to have it microbiologically tested and I got to try some. It was a bit dry but other than that pretty decent. The family also said not to microwave it cause their might be a silver sixpence in it ;)
I’m curious about the microbiology test results 😂😂😂
I was born October 4 1969
My mother used to make plum pudding. Being a child, I took no interest in how it was made or what went into it, but after Christmas dinner, she would carry it into the dining room with the lights dimmed, blue flames dancing all around it. After a minute or two, the brandy burned off and the pudding would be served with "hard sauce" which was white and quite firm.
I knew that she considered it to be very special, but having a child's taste, I didn't like it all that much. Looking back, I wish I had appreciated it more.
I wonder if the flaming puddings to celebrate Jesus Christ's bday are the reason for candles on bday cakes 🤔
My step-mother made plum pudding, I didn't like it much then either.
@@jrmckim No it's not 🤣
I would have thought hard sauce might mean it was alcoholic. We were a teetotal family who enjoyed either a “white” custard sauce or a “brown” brown sugar sauce. I loved both.
Delicious!!!!! In Scotland we have Clootie Dumpling ❤️ and my grandmother always made one for my birthday (Dec) and she’d dry its flour coating off by placing it in front of the fire! Not only scrumptious as it is or with custard but can also be sliced in the following days (if there’s any left!) and fried in bacon fat! Delicious 👍
"Her sauces are liquidy because there's a LOT of alcohol in them..."
Guess that explains the etymology behind being "sauced."
And hitting the sauce
Back on the sauce.
And saucy; the dictionary explains it really well
Or saucy wench.
I can see them just chugging the sauce on it's own for the alcohol😂
I'm sorry, whenever I hear the line "should be buried with a stake of holly through his heart" all I can think of is that is a great way to prevent Christmas vampires.
I've never seen it as the title sounded so bad, but I thought of "Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter." reading this.
🤣
That is a story that needs to exist!
@@jayhom5385 Give the book a read. The movie is silly fun, but the book is great because the author took great pains to ensure that Lincoln and everyone else from history were in places at times that they were. He set out to treat the work as if it were our own history, this is just the parts we never knew about. He very much succeeded.
So is eggnog. Vampires hate eggnog.
I’m from Ireland and still make my Christmas pudding in a cloth.I think the flavour is better than one made in a bowl. I remember my mothers anxiety when she un wrapped the pudding, would it crack, did it smell right and most important was the skin intact. She didn’t have a receipt and when she died it took many years to perfect it. Thanks for showing people this custom
Are you willing to share the recipe with random strangers? If not, any advice for using the cloth method?
One of Agatha Christie’s Poirot stories involves everyone in the house taking a turn to stir the Christmas pudding and make a wish, and the symbolism of all the “choking hazards” one might find in their slice come Christmas! Plus a murder, but that’s how it goes when you invite Poirot absolutely anywhere…
I LOVE when author's, director's share details like that ❣️ I cry when I hear "cake", or whatever it is, and then I'm left w/ questions because of deets lacking lol
Her Poirot story "Halloween Party" includes the snapdragon game, and yes, it was a children's game.
Several little known facts for you:
1, Poirot and murder seemed to always go together. Other guests started complaining about the murders, and became increasingly afraid of accepting weekend invitations when they knew Hercule would be there. That is why the lower-aristocracy stopped inviting him for country weekends.
2. The decline in invitations is when his case load lighted up [hmmm.] and he eventually had to retire, moving to Orlando to invest in real estate just prior to the Disney acquisitions. The rest is history; Poirot cashed out and used his capital gains to purchase a house in Ville Franche sur-Mer in the South of France.
3. He chose the property for two reasons: (a) the sea view, and (b) a wonderful bistro that served an excellent coq au vin. The excellent wine list, heavy on vintages from Provence, was an added incentive. Interestingly, perhaps, is that his purchase was from the estate, created when the prior owner died shortly after making Poirot's acquaintance a month earlier in Monte Carlo. The surete in Paris became involved [wonder why?!] but nothing came of their investigation.
I thought that was a rare one where no one actually died. Just a jewel robbery.
@@PandoraBear357 SPOILER BELOW…
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It was a fake murder double bluff. The young folks planned one of them to be found “dead” in the snow to fool Poirot, but he sussed it out and the fake victim and Poirot played it as if the fake murder had become real. You are correct that nobody actually died
You've probably noticed by now that the one constant in the entire history of Britain is alcohol
it's true we're a nation of pissheads
Is that why they're all so stiff? They're all blitzed?
As a Brit I can confirm that from our introduction of hops to our ale to make strong beer to the gin craze of the 18th century, yes we really REALLY love alcohol :)
Alcohol and tea.
Got love them brits...always sauced
I suspect that the "smell of laundry" was more like cooking meat than like Downy. Laundry soaps for the peasantry was made from beef tallow.
Once you filter tallow and add the salts to make salts, you get a very mild and persistent oily scent- not like a griddle, but pretty close! It would have been seen as pleasant because up until 1870s or so soap, even homemade soap, was highly taxed.
Or the smell could have been from the pudding being boiled in the copper, which was the huge copper vessel used to boil laundry in.
could be this, though more likely it has to do with the vessel it was cooked in (the smell and laundry does in the quote have to do with the cloth) as it was common to boil the pud in the copper. The copper referring to the big drum kettle in the laundry :)
@James McDonald -- that's interesting! Explains the scent better than just the cloth.
All of the above, I would imagine - tallow, boiling water, the copper kettle and the smell of hot boiled cloth and whatever wooden implement was used to fish it out with (taking the place of a wooden laundry stirrer).
The look on max’s face when he “now let light it on fire” is hilarious and has me laughing everytime
Just like RNGesus said:
"You my child, you should be the one with all the figgy pudding"
"that's alcoholic!" Welcome to Christmas in the UK, Max! You'd love it, I think.
A proper Christmas pudding should be capable of being fired by cannon, ship to ship, or ship to shore, in one piece and still alight. The alcohol flames can simply be extinguished by the addition of eaither a dessert wine, custard, brandy cream. It is traditional to test if the flames have been extinguised by adding more brandy. Real holly should always be used for decoration, and coins or charms included. This is all part of the Britsh tradition (along with boarding schools) of teaching British children survival skills that will serve them well in later life, should they survive into adulthood.
Not only UK... It is preaty much the same on the continent( Europe)... Chears from Poland!
Honestly I think it is a world wide thing. Even us Americans have plenty of alcoholic traditions in our Christmas traditions though usually in houses that don't have kids in it.
@@doomslayer2290 "Though usually in houses that don't have kids in it"
Cowards.
Same in Australia and New Zealand my mum used to say they use to find a penny in the pud
officer: how much have you had to drink tonight?
victorian: just a slice of cake i swear!
I've had a slice of fruit cake that was aged in apricot brandy, had to be driven home by a friend from that Christmas party.
Those old recipes are no joke
My mom included grated carrot in the pudding with the dried fruit and apples. Instead of brandy sauce, she made a caramel sauce. It was served warm, sometimes with whipped cream and/or vanilla ice cream. So delicious!
Instructions not clear currently being scolded by Mrs. Crocombe
🤣 she’s wise and always uses a basin.
lol, I could hear her like she was standing beside me when you said "candied peel"
@@denji769 I immediately paused the video to come find who mentioned Avis Crocombe in the comments.
@@tysonperna8844 XD Same here. Their figgy pudding video was just as much fun!
She would give the Crocombe side eye.
So funny to see this as 'history' when modern British Christmas pudding is relatively unchanged and still as beloved! Christmas is just an excuse to eat your brandy, after all.
Ha! So true.
We're in America, everything is 'historic' to us 😂😂😂
I genuinely thought Christmas pudding was just a thing almost everywhere
don't forget the brandy cream on top!
I wonder how many people make one these days though, as opposed to buying one from the supermarket. Also, I remember my mother steaming the pudding for about two hours on Christmas Day when I was a child but I reckon most people probably reheat it in a microwave now.
You're wrong about Scrooge. He's had a total change of heart! He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world! I'm sure he loves this video!
Subbed. As an English person, let me tell you, my other half still puts £1 coins in our Christmas Pudding (which is what this pudding is called these days). It is an acquired taste, after a full Christmas dinner. If you all sit down for 2 hours it is best eaten at that type of interval, which of course, it never is. Children routinely hate this pudding, as it is nothing like modern desserts.
In the old days, being boiled in a copper, it WOULD have smelled like laundry as that was the primary use for coppers - boiling washing. Infact, most houses would not have had a copper, as the fuel required to keep one going meant most could not afford it. So they took their washing to wash houses instead. Houses that had coppers usually had outbuildings in the garden, and some boarding houses had a copper in the yard that would be shared by several families.
I am not sure whether people took their puddings to the wash house to cook 😆 sounds emminently possible. Wash houses were community places where women met to gossip, let alone do laundry. In much the same way as a bread oven used to be a community asset.
Anyway, I'm 48, my Grandma would make this pudding around September and keep it under her bed until the big day. It was a matter of some boasting how soon before the event you made it.
I'm afraid we buy ours from the supermarket, but I spend enough time cooking dinners from scratch without doing things like this. There is certainly no financial advantage to make your own given the expense of the ingredients.
Well I was disappointed that foggy pudding is neither figgy or puddingy. Like, non British pudding which is soft and goopy.
@@mary-janereallynotsarah684 I believe a pudding had to have suet in and be cooked in a stomach. Haggis is technically a pudding. Burns called it 'chieftain of the pudding race'. Our blood sausage we call 'black pudding'
@@billysmith3841 oddly I always loved blood pudding. But now I can't eat it due to my beliefs.
"Bedight" has a more modern relative that we might be more likely to know. "Bedecked" is the newer version. The CK and the GH were pronounced quite alike in English a long time ago. An even more modern alternative that comes from "bedecked" that almost anyone would know is "decked out."
I love etymology! Thank you
Bedecked sounds like the German "bedeckt", meaning covered, as the past form of bedecken = to cover
Well bedeck comes from Middle Dutch and entered into English in the 16th century by means of Dutch sailors influencing English nautical terminology while bedight originates in Old English and is cognate with the German Dichten - To compose poetry and Dichter - A poet. Both the English and German entered into Proto-Germanic from the Romans and the Latin verb Dictare - To dictate. Bedeck and bedight aren't related at all.
The Old English verb Dihtan was much closer to the Latin and German meanings of to dictate or compose but it also had the meaning of to ordain or to appoint and from that the idea of organizing and setting things in order. This in the medieval period saw an evolution of the word to mean to adorn, equip, clothe, prepare, and even evolved as slang of sex and murder oddly enough, like if you dighted a wench the other night in the time of Shakespeare it meant you gave her a good shagging.
@@hoathanatos6179 Mhmm. Bedekt and dichten in modern Dutch.
I bet the lady who made this recipe could never imagine that 200 years later, a guy would be sharing it with the world all over again. Food really does humanize the past. Thank you for your amazing work.
Excellent statement
As a little tip: Zante Currants that are commonly found at a grocery store in the US aren't actually currents, they're raisins but from small grapes. It's very hard to find actual dried currants, either black or red. But well worth it if you can! That might be why the pudding was overly raisiny. That should be the dominant flavor, but you should be able to taste the currants. Love the episode!
Historically the Zante Currants would most likely actually be what the recipe ment.
@@1rbroderi not on Britain, we have wild currants everywhere they're widely available for cooking.
I know in some states like Virginia it's illegal to grow currants because officials are concerned that the currants could spread some sort of disease/blight to certain trees.
I haven't seen currants in my rural area, but heard about them when I was in the UK. My dad and I looked into growing some only to find out that our state was one of the states that banned growing them. I don't think I've ever seen currants or Zante currants in my region.
The currants called for in this pudding recipe ARE small raisins.
Do you think craisins would work instead? I hate raisins so much
i live in aus, but my family always does an old fashioned english christmas dinner every year (which is unusual, its summer during so everyone eats summery foods for christmas instead) and we always have a christmas pudding. we've never made it ourselves, we order in advance. dunking it in brandy and setting it alight is compulsory lmao, it looks so magical and makes a wonderful smell. we eat it with custard, vanilla ice cream, or thick cream, often all three at once
My 8 year old was asking me what figgy pudding was. As an American, I had no clue. One quick search and we were binge watching a bunch of your vids after finding this one. He is now a huge fan, as am I. Thank you for being informative, entertaining, and educational.
Are Christmas puds not available in America at all? If they're not, it's a sad state of affairs! Christmas pud with brandy butter or custard or double cream is a culinary delight which should not be denied our American chums!
@@grendelgrendelsson5493I’m sure there’s some sold but as an American I haven’t seen any available
@@grendelgrendelsson5493 Only from specialty stores, it's just not part of christmas tradition for most of us, and for those who it is, they make it themselves.
12:30 FYI the reason it smelled like laundry, according to the Charles Dickens Museum, was because Mrs. Cratchet was poor and would not have had a separate pot to use for cooking, so she used her laundry copper. The story also mentions the cloth, as you said. Also, Mrs. Cratchet did not have an oven (because poor people wouldn’t have such a luxury), hence the goose was off to the baker’s to cook.
Ooh makes sense! Thanks for your comment I was wondering!
Wasn't a pudding almost always made in laundry copper? Cuz nobody had cooking pots big enough to fit in a pudding.
Um…. Alcohol was often used for stain removal 😅, so laundress’s (women who did laundry) would often have that smell on them. Generally it was cheap spirits and they had a reputation of being big drinkers as a result. This might be a reference to that thinking at the time. Kind of like how blonde jokes are funny because you already know the blonde is supposed to be stupid. 😊
@@avelineventer2482 Bernadette Banner has a great video on the process of doing laundry for a Victorian. Gasoline is involved. Things were crazy back in those times.
Gross. Like cooking with a wash basin.
I forget if I've commented this before, but Max Miller brings the pitch-perfect level of manic to this history and food, and he's just delightful.
Also I am always thrown by official art of the Cratchits because they are locked into my head as Muppets forevermore.
Thank you 🙏 And yes, the Muppet Christmas Carol is definitive 🤣
The BBC documentary series "The Victorian Farm at Christmas" (which shows three historians living as Victorian farmers during the Christmas period) demonstrates using the laundry copper to boil a traditional Christmas pudding.
me: I want to eat sweets and get drunk
Them: *brings out pudding liberally doused in brandy*
me: perfection
Efficient
Pretty much similar and sounds like fruit cake, it taste very good. Would recommend trying one.
Also throws a bone to those who like to play with fire.
You put brandy or rum butter in it as well, which is booze beaten in with butter and icing sugar to make a thick, sweet boozy paste that melts on the warm pud and mixes with the cream. 🤤
“Who’s that Pokémon?”
Looks behind Max
“It’s Christmas Pikachu!”
Chrispachu?
christmas pikachu is fine but i demand that everyone turn their attention to my sweet child Christmas Applin
Also Christmass Applin!
There's some apple-looking thing behind the Pikachu too.
It's sugar plum clefairy!
Max's utter glee at how boozy and delicious the pudding turns out to be is absolutely EVERYthing.
My Mom, from Scotland, always made Christmas pudding, as well as fruitcake. She made two kinds of fruitcake, light and dark. The light has candied cherries, currents, and dried peel. The dark was basically the same fruits as go into the pudding. She always made two of the dark and one light. One dark was designated as “avec” and the other “sans” indicating that one had been liberally soaked in brandy or rum. After they were steamed, she would wrap them in cheesecloth or a towel and put them in Tupperwear containers and the alcoholic one was frequently and liberally sprinkled with the brandy/rum.
In later years, Mom made a whole lot of dark ones for the fall fair at the church. They were so popular that she took orders for them, “avec” and “sans” and the money paid up-front to the church. They were $15 each.
One year, she dropped them off an hour before the sale and they were all stolen… She was heartbroken. She stopped making them for the fall fair after that. We still got ours.
We once went on a ski outing and Mom packed the container containing 1 and 1/2 well marinated and wrapped cakes with us. When we returned, she asked my sister to take them inside… Some time pater Mom asked where they were. My sister said “I put them on the piano bench”. They weren’t there but the plastic container was empty on the floor. Someone asked where our St. Bernard was. We finally tracked him down to the basement where we found him lying on his back, obviously well inebriated. The fact that he’d eaten even the cheesecloth was confirmed when we found it out in the back yard…
Oh… when I got married, Mom offered to make the traditional wedding fruitcake. Most people don’t eat it, just take the “lucky piece” home. Mom made this HUGE one as well as the small wrapped pieces for the guests. We also had a wedding cake so the fruitcake, weighing about 8 lbs, went untouched. I brought it home and put it in the fridge. She’d put so much brandy in it that it melted the Royal Icing and it was literally dripping out of the cake and all over the fridge. It was damned good, though…
@@MudhooksI’d so much love to taste your mom’s fruitcake! It sounds wonderful.
"Now let's light this thing on fire!"
He looked entirely too enthusiastic about that.
I noticed that too. None the less a very good look for him.
Wait, it’s not normal to be excited to light shit on fire?
@@lillythepone2994 My first thought too. "Wouldn't you be?"
Anyone else just laughing at him screaming, "No Christmas, No Christmas, No Christmas."
Reminded me of peaky blinders, no fighting!
I laughed so hard and kept rewatching that part
He did rather sound like the Governor of California.
For anyone looking for that part: 10:08
@@JerryB507 Christ, another Cromwell in the making!
Couple years late making this one. Put it together a couple weeks ago and will be serving it at a party in a couple of days. Smells bland hanging in its cloth. I'm sure the addition of all the booze and boozy sauce will make a huge difference. Will update soon!
How'd it go?
@@jrmckim Much like a fruitcake bread pudding. I liked it. Not everyone did. Served it with the punch sauce, and it was very boozy! Some said that it might be better with a heavy cream. I tried some leftovers with eggnog ice cream and thought it was great. If you like fruit cake, you'll like this. Either way, it was fun and a great conversation piece! Merry Christmas!
"spread itself around the globe" is a hilarious term for what one of my favorite British podcasters calls (ironically of course) England's "enthusiastic foreign policy" XD
"Oh those crazy brits." 😂
"Now let's light this thing on fire!" 😳😳😳
AND sing Happy Birthday to Jesus over the flaming pud! (Not a common tradition, but my family is one of those who do it.)
So many good reaction gifs possible from this vid!
the secret is to heat the brandy in a spoon like you're cooking heroine
@@jupitermelichios392 true! Then try to light the brandy in the spoon as you pour it out.
I used 'bedight' in my D&D game this week and found out that two of my players also watch Max.
Boom! Love this!
I literally made this over the weekend, for Christmas 2022, exactly as you directed. My pot was "singing," and it turned out great! Damn man, you are wonderful! As a "historical foodie buff", I am so thrilled to have found your channel and am binge-watching your episodes. Keep up the great work!
Oh and while I'm commenting: you should have cut into the centre of your pudding and created a wedge, not a slice. Christmas Pudding doesn't hold together massively well unless you make it 6 months or more ahead of Christmas.
As an aside, I used to make my own Christmas Puddings back in the 1970s. I used a Pyrex bowl to hold them with cloth and string around the top. Here in England I had an old Victorian copper for boiling clothes which was in the outhouse to the place I lived. It was literally heated by burning wood underneath it. The laundry smell came from the residue of soap suds remaining in the copper from previous washdays. Hence Dickens was perfectly correct with his colourful explanation.
I legitimately hope this isn't your only Christmas/holiday-themed episode for the month, because this was so much fun to watch.
Brandy
Had us in the first half, not gonna lie.
This. I'm hoping he shows us how to make Aunt Bethany's jello mold from Christmas Vacation.
@@thethpian You're a fine girl...
@@Habitt5253 what a good wife you woul beeeee
Pah, you call that alcoholic? My grandma makes her Christmas cake two months in advance and "feeds" it with brandy every few days. By Christmas it is quite impressive...
Ah, yes. You eat a small slice after dinner so that you have food in your stomach to soak up some of the booze...
That's the only way to make it! My mum does the same.
I feel like I'm in the wrong family! 😄 That Christmas cake sounds delicious and necessary! 😂
Wow - that might be covidproof!
My mom uses rum.
The dad energy at the end of the video is unreal 😂
My father had made something sort of like this, he used a fruitcake with a lot of dried fruit, wrapped it in tin foil then soaked with whiskey and put it in the fridge. Every week or so he would take it out and add more whiskey. When he had used the entire fifth of whiskey to soak it with he left it in the fridge until Christmas when we partoke of it. It was absolutely delicious.
That is pretty much exactly what this is. Except the spices are far more generous and it is has stout in the baked product. And it was brandy not whiskey which is more Scottish.
"A good plum pudding should last for a thousand years" so a proto-Twinkie, got it
LMAO
But with booze.
There was a guy who actually saved twinkies for ten years. Solid as a rock lol. He shattered them with a hammer.
A good fruit cake is best when years old. The best one I ever are was 50 years old and enjoyed with a good Hunting Port. The slice was small, but the impression it made was immense and lasting. No Fox hunting involved by the way.
"Whoo that's Alcoholic" then giggles like he has already had a few slices
lol XD
My thoughts exactly. 😂
My Mum, and she does this with Christmas Cake as well, adds Brandy to the mixture, soaks the fruit in brandy and every few days pours brandy onto the pudding as it ages.
In England, the suet we use is a brand called ATORA. It has been used for years and years and years!
Surprisingly, that brand exists in America as well. I'll need to take note of it.
I just loved everything about this episode! For quite a few years, we observed Stir Up Sunday, making two puddings; one for the current year's Christmas, and one to be matured for 13 months and eaten the following year (they were very good). Every year we would increase the recipe by one more ingredient such as an additional type of dried or fresh fruit, until we got to a recipe that was absurdly long and would engage the whole family peeling carrots, chopping apples, dicing pears, etc.
Also, I absolutely love that you want to revive archaic words like 'bedight' - I have been working tirelessly to revive the word 'nextly' (E.g: Firstly/nextly/furthermore...finally)
Together, we will revive English as it is meant to be!
@@TastingHistory as a German speaker I'd appreciate this.
When reading old English dialects I always get the impression that they have much more of their "Germaness" left and that they're much more elegant than modern English.
I actually use the word "nextly".
At first I used it because I just didn't know any better, when starting out learning English I often just made assumptions what the English equivalent of a German word might be and then used this in my sentence.
Someone then told me that "nextly is not a word" and I looked it up. Well, turned out it was a word after all :D
Oh! And another good one is "overmorrow" for "the day after tomorrow"... which is pretty much exactly what we use in German: übermorgen.
@@barbarusbloodshed6347 I didn’t know overmorrow but I like it! Just unique enough that people will think I’m pretentious without being so bad as to want to punch me. 🤣
@@TastingHistory yeah, it was an actual word... kind of weird, that it is no longer in use as it is clearly useful.
More useful than saying "the day after tomorrow" each time, at least.
When my British friends and I use "overmorrow" we prentiously roll the Rs in it.
And whatever the sentence in which you use it, you have to end it with "my good Sir" :D
"Figgy pudding" sounds like an insult from a Guy Ritchie movie.
"Check it out, guv'nor, got ourselves a couple of figgy puddin's, don't we luv?"
🤣
Not even Guy Ritchie would use such "Hollywood cockney" dialogue.
My family makes persimmon pudding, which is similar to plum pudding. It contains the pulp of two Hachiya persimmons, a cup of raisins, and a cup of chopped pecans. Originally, it was supposed to be either steamed or put into a bain-marie, but my Mom (who acquired the recipe from my Dad's mother) quickly decided that was too much work with four little ones underfoot, so she just decided to bake it instead. We eat it every year at Christmas, and occasionally at Thanksgiving as well. It is served with "hard sauce" that is hard only as it relates to alcohol, because it is loose and runny (made with butter, sugar, an egg, and as much bourbon, whiskey, or sherry as you please). The hard sauce was something Mom's grandmother made for canned plum pudding every Christmas, so the combination of the pudding and the sauce are an amalgamation from both sides of my family.
Sorry this is so off schedule but it is October and getting closer to the time to make these again. My grands were British and we always had plum pudding at Christmas. Fruitcake too. Our fruitcakes were more sauced than the plum puddings were though. We enjoy the pudding with a lemon sauce, but many put a hard sauce on it which seems like a loose powder sugar frosting with brandy. We always flame the pudding and the fresh Holly. Coins were hid underneath rather than in but we also own silver charms that could be baked inside. The fruitcake used to get marinated with a jigger of whatever booze was hanging around, about every month or more. It was made a year in advance. Tastes amazing. Thanks for the history of it all. Looking forward to this Christmas' videos!
I have a couple of great recipes for fruitcake and they are well and truly sauced or soused.
I dropped gave one to a client along with some cookies for their Christmas party and warned them about waiting an hour after eating cake to drive. When he called to thank me, he said he thought I was joking about the alcohol content until he tried a slice. They toasted each other with it. :)
Oooo, yes! My childhood also included ‘hard & soft sauce’ with our pudding 🥰
They should be made the week before advent. The collect for the Sunday before Advent in the Book of Common Prayer starts "Stir up we beseech thee oh Lord..." This was considered a reminder to make your pudding! LOL
The hard sauce that my mother made was different than what you describe. It was white and had the consistency of paste.
"I love the smell of [old] books. Does anyone else do that?"
Why do you think I watch you? It's like walking into an historical library each week!
I used to help make 2000 plum puddings for fundraising. It was done by hand from start to finish. The best part was pleating up the cloth and tying it off. We sat in the same room as 9 boilers, pleating up, in temperatures around 30 C.
86 F in freedom units
So, I just realized I own that book! My mom gave me a couple "really old cookbooks" that she found at a thrift shop because she knows I enjoy cooking, and I had been excited to see one from the 1800's (clearly no one at Goodwill realized what it was). It's been on a shelf in my kitchen for the last 3 years, but I kind of want to try some of the recipes now.
@Cristia Olson
Be careful storing it in the kitchen, where airborne grease and steam will slowly damage the book. Just a friendly suggestion!
If it’s an original it might be worth something! Could go bring it into a used bookseller’s to get appraised
Here in Newfoundland and Labrador Canada, Puddings are often boiled in a pudding bag, made of unbleached cotton. Both sweet and savoury puddings are cooked this way.
I love the little Pillsberry doughboy impression at the end there lol.
The excitement on his face at lighting that pudding on fire made me holiday season.
I cracked up when you sniffed the book. It’s one of the first things I do when I get a used book. It smells like coming home.
In this age of technology, streaming and digital EVERYTHING, its nice to see someone taking the time to appreciate the smell of a good old fashion book. I never knew how great books and magazines smelled until a roommate showed it to me. It truly is an intoxicating smell.
It is. Literally.
They've found that the molds found growing in old books have a mild hallucinatory effect and may even be addictive
One would think that "Figgy Pudding" might actually have figs in it😂😂😋😋
The same could be said of a hamburger usually made from 100% prime beef!
Doesn't matter what you call it as long as it tastes good.
The hamburger is named after the region of Hamburg. There was no such thing as a burger before the hamburger so it’s not “ham-burger” but “Hamburg-er”
@@maddockemerson4603 Very true, I was just saying. But what's your explaination about fairy cakes? These don't contain fairies, at least not the ones I've been munching on.
@@stevemartin6882 cakes that fairies eat?
He addressed that in the first few minutes...
Of course you've missed out on the best part of a Christmas pudding - having a slice fried in brandy butter on Boxing Day morning...
I love that, in the tradition of Julia Child , you show us your mistakes & genuine reactions.
There are so many mistakes 😆
You learn more from a mistake than a success, after all, especially if it's someone else's.
@@TastingHistory as Bob Ross or my parents would say, there are no mistakes.. just happy little accidents.
Is anyone else absolutely in love with Max's wry chuckle.
My mother always served with "hardsauce" basically butter/powdered sugar with a touch of brandy. A higher caloric density cannot be found.
“Some think it should have coins and other _choking hazards_ cooked inside” lmao
Irish barmbrack does this and is an important tradition. Don't knock it til you find that ring in your slice and get to feel #blessed haha
:D "as little prices for good luck" it killed me too
Silver sixpence, and a gold ring are the traditional items.
Sounds like Mardi Gras king cake, which has a little plastic baby in it.
Well, you're not supposed to hork it down in chunks. You're supposed to chew it.
The Brits say "Happy Christmas" today because it used to be "merry" in the past, with copious amounts of drinks, but then the Puritans came along 😂
“...but then the Puritans came along” is how so many stories about good things going away start.
@@TastingHistory "But everything changed when the puritan nation attacked"
Don't worry, we drove the Puritans out long ago so now we're all s***-faced at Christmas again! So "Merry Christmas" is the norm, at least it was last year. I have heard rumours the Puritans could be back though....
@@TastingHistory In New England, where I live, the antipathy towards Christmas outlasted the Restoration by many years; it wasn't until the 19th century that Puritan strictures began to relax.
We say Merry Christmas today - although Happy Christmas is also acceptable it clashes with “and a Happy New Year” so we say Merry most often.
I love the smell of books, especially old books. You are definitely not alone in that.
Also, my uncle married a lovely English woman, and when he came back home for Christmas one year, he brought us Christmas pudding, meant to be doused with Brandy and lit on fire. It was awesome, so I decided I wanted to make my own. The recipe I used was mrs. Acton's recipe. It was superb. I put some Brandy butter on it And that was probably the best thing I've ever eaten. I love that you are using her recipe.
I have made it twice, and the first time I used something specifically meant for puddings, because I figured it would be much easier. The second time, I wanted to try a pudding cloth. I had amazing results with both..... I wish I could help you figure out what you did wrong..
Also, many butcher shops can either special order kidney suet or already do have kidney suet in stock- at least in the area I live in, anyway. I did find out after the first batch that there is a difference in the suets that you find, but if you take the membrane off like I had to with both of them and make sure it's all just the suet fat and nothing else like the connective tissue, It turns out amazing either way. It really does.
I didn't have anything other than cheesecloth, so I just folded it into multiple layers using multiple pieces that I had, and it worked just fine. Flour it well, make sure your water doesn't stop boiling and never boils away too much, and you'll be fine.
also, don't use a whole bunch of Brandy and make sure it's warm. It lights on fire better that way
You had me sold with the 6 beef kidneys suet. Nothing says Christmas pudding like beef kidneys!
If a core childhood memory of yours isn't desperately trying to hide the fact nana's Christmas pudding was so boozy you felt a little giddy so you can have more, did you even Christmas?
Exactly and sherry trifle!!
@@cazadoo339 It's not trifle without the sherry, no question :)
@@cazadoo339 it's not trifle without beef sautéed with peas and onions!
@@javeedn I see what you did there. Bravo
@@somethingillregret thank you hahaha
Pikachu looks so dapper in his top hat! I’m so excited to see this. I know how much of a bear it was for you.
Also- anyone else hear the voice of Scrooge McDuck and Donald in that scene from A Christmas Carol? 😂
Isn’t he fancy! Yes, it was a trial, yet maybe my favorite episode yet.
@@TastingHistory We are proud of you!
My head always goes to the Muppets for A Christmas Carol.
@@xneurianx There goes Mister Humbug, there goes Mister Grim!
Well, part of the reason he compared it with laundry, was that, especially in poorer households, the same copper that was used to boil the pudding, was also used for laundry. And as he said you have a wet cloth, to add to that smell.
Lauri
I love the smell of old books. My Mother always thought it was weird. There was a small book store by my house as a child, called "Al's Old Books". I can still recall the smell of the place if I close my eyes and picture standing among the claustrophobic placing of the towering shelves.
Yes, someone else who loves the smell of books - the old ones are especially divine :)
When I saw him smell the book, my first thought was somewhere between, "Ha! I knew I wasn't the only one who does that!" and "Thank god! I'm not the only one who does that!"
@@scaper8 It's partly why I prefer to buy my reading material as a physical book rather than on my Kindle - it just smells so nice :)
It’s the best!
Love that smell. I have a friend who was a librarian and the first thing he does when he opens a book is sniff it. Even did it with his comic books in college. I recently described a Scotch to someone as having a faint, musty, old book like aftertaste. 😂
Hopefully that book was printed before arsenic was used to dye paper green.🤢
so glad i'm not the only christmas lunatic who's gonna make one of these things this year ❤️
I wish you the best of luck.
The Christmas Lunatics would be a great name for a Christian horrorcore group.
@@DragonTigerBoss i would pay at least $40 to see them live
Lots more time on our hands; kitchen experiments abound!
@@TastingHistory In addition to adding a bottle of brandy to her Christmas pudding mix. My Great Grandmother (who was English) used to soak her Christmas pudding fruit in brandy. She'd put the fruit into a large jar & cover it in brandy in August. & top up the jar as needed.
She made a dozen puddings each year & we're still eating them. Her puddings are 'lethal' if you eat one you can't drive. Last year my Dad had a slice of it & drove to get some ice from the gas station. (We're in Australia so ice is a *must* at Christmas time here.)
He got pulled over & had to take a breathalyser, which he naturally failed. When he went to court he had to take the recipe to show he hadn't been drinking just eating Christmas pudding. The judge took one look at the recipe & dismissed his case.
That's honestly a great aspect to having british family. There's a whole universe of dried fruit & spice based desserts (and even main dishes) that one otherwise wouldn't know existed. Quite exotic to my American palette.
Envious.
The smell of old books makes me so happy. It is the smell of a new adventure.
Me (a self-identified grinch): Okay that pikachu and the joy of historic holiday baking are the only things that warm my heart. Maybe Christmas isn’t that bad after all...
😁 pikachu makes everything better
What about brandy?
@@mortisCZ Brandy too; goes without saying : )
God bless us, every one!
This is almost identical to my mum's Christmas pudding recipe. She would make a huge batch of it in October and feed it brandy over the weeks until Christmas, usually forgetting where she had put all of them so we would have one in the next summer when it was discovered.
🤣 I love that. Pudding surprises throughout the year.
I recently read an Agatha Christie novel that the crime was committed while the children played snapdragon. There was something about burning raisins, and I was confused. This was helpful!
My Granny (we live in Scotland) used to make a Clootie Dumpling for our birthdays. It’s not dissimilar to your pudding. The skin that forms on the outside of it was the part we always fought over! Good memories.
I can so relate to your sniffing that book. One of my fondest childhood memories is the smell of the library-- all leather and paper and glue mixed with furniture polish. So comforting!
@Suzanne Stauffer - I also love the feel of the paper in my hands and heft of a book. Plus, you can see all the bookmarks at once and even use a stack of books as a footstool or stepping stool. You can't do that with an ebook reader! And real books make a great interior design accessory.
**Holds hand up to being a book sniffer.**
The odour even has a name: biblichor:
Biblichor
“Biblichor is the word that describes the particular smell that belongs to old books. Biblichor is a newly created word that combines the Greek words biblio (book) with ichor (the fluid that flows like blood in the veins of the gods), much the way petrichor was created."
The term petrichor was coined by Australian scientists in 1964 to describe the unique, earthy smell associated with rain. It is caused by rainwater falling on dry soil, along with certain compounds like ozone, geosmin, and plant oils.
Cooking things in an animal's stomach was widespread and gives us that Scottish dish haggis. A good way to start a fight north of Hadrian's Wall is to say that there is evidence that haggis existed in Lancashire, England before any record of it in Scotland.
Traditionally, the best time to start making a Christmas pudding is Boxing Day (26th December) of the year before. Some advocate whisky, brandy, or rum as your alcohol. I suggest alternating between all three to get the grain, grape, and sugar flavours of them all. Soak the fruit in alcohol to rehydrate it so that it doesn't draw moisture from the pudding crumb.
Our old three- and six-penny coins were made of silver and could be cooked in the pudding. Modern coins mostly contain copper and will poison you. Not a good move to kill your nearest and dearest while you're celebrating Jebus' birthday.
Pulled over for a random breath test by the police:
Have you been drinking today, sir?
No, officer, but I did have a double helping of my Nana's Christmas pud!
The biblichor is so pleasant because when lignin (one of the fibers in paper) breaks down it forms vanillin, one of the main flavour components of vanilla.
@@Corvinus_swe Thank you also for justifying my weirdness for inhaling the scent of old books.
Thank you for justifying my weirdness for inhaling the scent of old books.
@@Corvinus_swe Vanillin is found in a lot of places. Oak barrels, when charred, form a thin layer of vanillin. That’s what gives hwhiskey that color, as well.
@@Corvinus_swe So much so that it's the source of Imitation Vanilla extract.
3 months later and I’m still impressed by the segue into the sponsorship.
My Mom was from England and when we visited our Grandparents during the Christmas holidays we loved Nanas' Christmas pudding. She would start it a few months before and once a week she would ladle a tablespoon or so over it while it rested in the larder. My Dads' eyes would light up and he would have such a grin on his face when Nana brought it to the table.
My favourite part would be the the lazy days. With lots of leftovers, days spent in pyjamas, watching movies and playing board games with the family.
That’s been much of my life for 10 months.
@@TastingHistory I'm not sure I'm jealous of that.
@@TastingHistory This is why my head-canon for 2020 is that the evil genie granted everyone's wishes all at once. No work, no social engagements, no need to do our hair, dress up or even wear a bra/underwear/shoes...nothing expected of us but to stay at home in our pjs playing video games and watching tv. Never bet against the evil genie. They always play dirty.
When you mentioned the traditional stuffing of festive choking hazards, I laughed so hard I had to pause the video and my husband came in to see if I was okay.
🤣
Don’t worry, those are in the Twelfth Night cake.
I have A Christmas Carol on Audible, read by none other than Tim Curry. If you've never heard Tim Curry gushing about the Christmas meal in the Crachet's place, with all the vocal ham that can be expected, you've never lived.
Just now seeing this. My grandmother is from Liverpool. They also cover the pudding with a custard sauce.
I recommend Dr Lucy Worsley’s “12 Days of Christmas “ and explains an authentic Tudor Christmas. Very very different than Christmas today.
@Kevin Eaton - I adore that episode of Dr Worsley's! I could watch it any time of the year.
@@MossyMozart I have seen all her docs multiple times. She’s absolutely amazing
Yes, I love her work. She is so likable!
Dr. Worsely is my queen
its been some time since i've seen them but the bbc historic farms, christmas episodes where interesting and enjoyable.
"It may be served with German"
Me, a German: 👀
What is meant by that? Is it a wine or a Sauce?
@@MrBlueManCole In the recipe it says: "It may be served with German, wine or punch sauce." So German sauce, actually (whatever that is). I just took away the sauce (joke's on you, Mr. Ramsay) to make a joke.
@@Tymdek As a German, I'm also really curious what German sauce is/was
Well Max, I'm trying the recipe this year. Pudding just came out of the pot and seems like it held together. Thanks to you and Townsend, I love historical cooking. I'd send a pic, if I could but I'll let you know what my guests think this weekend.
How did it taste??
@@nicolepowers9502 it was good, the texture was firm, good balance of fruit flavors and the candied orange peel gave a crunch almost nut-like. My guests enjoyed it and were quite surprised to find out what actual Figgy Pudding was. Seems like it is the root to what we know as fruitcake, but much better.
Old books smell great! It's a type of mold that gives them that scent.
It’s still common in Scotland to make a light fruit pudding called “clootie dumpling”, “cloot” is Scots for cloth. My mum uses a clean pillow case.
Those are soooo good
@@crimsonia0nightrayne I wanted to make a suet pudding for my partner while I was in the US with her but they don't sell like... half of the ingredients I needed for ANYTHING I wanted. Why do people not eat suet???
@@Abigail-hu5wf According to other replies: you can get it from a Mexican or Cajun grocery store. Other grocery store butchers might not have it on hand but may be willing to get it for you (could take a few days to get it). Apparently, small business type stores will be more likely to get it for you than larger retailers. And finally, you could look for a whole animal butcher.
@@Abigail-hu5wf for some reason, we insist on feeding it to the birds.
Whole foods carries tallow ( which is rendered and cleaned suet similar in colour to the fat in the video) and if you put the jar in the fridge you can scrape nice sized bits with a fork.
I buy tallow cheaply online in 10lb tubs for making Pastry crust and cleaning leather clothing. It's even easier to scrape it from the pail and it doesn't have the issue of shattered glass from temperature shock.
However it's best to keep it in the fridge because moisture from the air can cause surface mold. If it happens just scrape it off.
Atora suet from the United Kingdom is also fairly inexpensive online but American tallow is much cheaper and far more versatile as it has no added ingredients.
May I suggest using tallow to fry chips/fries? They stay golden yellow and take longer to get soggy.
And it makes lederhosen more stretchy around the waist.
The best is when you fry the leftovers in butter the following morning….
Mum always made thirteen Christmas puddings each year - booked them in the old wash boiler over a two day period. Two large ones - Christmas day and New Year's day - and eleven small ones. We had one each month all through the year.
Yes, we all like(d) Christmas pudding, and rich Christmas cake. She had four of those to bake as well, one for Christmas and one each for dad, my brother and me as birthday cakes.
Happy, tasty, days.
For me, it was the gathering of family. My mom put on the best Christmas Eve Party. We had eating, singing, and Santa Clause handing out gifts. Mom died in 2001, and Christmas just isn't the same. So I treasure any year I get to spend time with family.
This recipe is so similar to my familiy's Christmas pudding recipe 😆 Max is pretty game trying to tighten the pudding in the cloth on his own. It is always at least a two person job in our family.
"Don't try this at home!"
Oh, dude, we still do this every year in the UK lol. The coins thing, too.
Was England severely overpopulated at some point in history, and they just decided they needed more ways to introduce accidental death to the populace?
@@nightsong81 thats the whole reason why we are only allowed to breed on certain days of the year or face the queen in a duel. they had it so good back then.
@@gmaxe3561 This is now how I believe things work in the UK, and nobody is going to convince me otherwise.
Who are these blasphemous heathens spouting indecent lies? We English shall cast them down the royal tea mines for this transgression.
The Royal Mint still produce silver sixpences that you can order online. Though obviously they do cost a bit more, £30 for this year's.
Sauces were extremely alcoholic... hence the term 'getting sauced'.
That appeals to my Irish DNA.....I'm not joking.
Maybe why the warning to fair ladies not to partake of the cake.
"Don't worry it's not going to take a few weeks for the history." I don't know about the rest of us but I'd happily listen to you rant on and on about history for a few weeks straight.